When you don't know the difference between there, their, and they're, you come across as being so uneducated that your viewpoint can be safely dismissed. The literate is unlikely to learn much from the illiterate.

Which I won't waste my time with ;)I'll rather read a book, rant about all the crap CCP is constantly adding (latest being that docking/undocking camera junk) and wait for my subscriptions to lapse, because I've decided to now vote with my wallet.

By the way.. How are you doing? Haven't talked to you in aaaaaaaaaaages..

When you don't know the difference between there, their, and they're, you come across as being so uneducated that your viewpoint can be safely dismissed. The literate is unlikely to learn much from the illiterate.

The Scope

Gallente Federation

I miss the old CCP actors live events stuff, frankly.Stuff like mysteries and hidden items and other junk stashed away in some corner of new eden/wormholes, waiting for us to trip over them, and advance the story.

Sigma Special Tactics Group

they happened during Eve's golden age. I remember some of them, in particular the ones around the Sansha incursions, before the Incursion expansion.

I remember those times we dropped everything and went as many jumps as it took to get to the on-the-spot incursion, in anything we had at the time. There would be text of other colors (I don't remember which color) in local of actors playing the role of NPC rallying players. We would follow them, picking up more ships as we went, a bigger fleet, kitchen sink, vets, noobs, missioners, pirates and bears alike. Who has logi? Who can FC? We need boost.

That first time reaching the site of the violent wormhole, more nightmares on the field that you could imagine, and in an exploration ship (before SoE ships) hardly fit to run missions let alone deal with nightmares pouring out of a wormhole only to be followed by a carrier. My hands were shaking. The fear felt real. We even went into lowsec, fleets of strangers working together and survived.

Valiant efforts were made to hold it together. SYNE and FC0RD. Players put a real effort into it, organizing symposiums, reports, research efforts. Even back then the forums would scroll out in days. Even the IGS page, if you stayed away for a day, you might miss something if you didn't scroll down.

And the novels that tied them all together. Empyrean Age, Templar One, Burning Life... and the chronicles! if you liked "pulp science fiction" the chronicles were it. They captured that essence of the game in those chronicles well.

Those days are gone. Most of those players are gone. Most of those who are gone were only sticking around for those live events and the immersion/content that grew from them.

The last true "live event", something about black sites, an entire pickup fleet was fed into a nullsec gatecamp and raep-caged in a bubble. CCP's way of saying "Hey role-players and people who care about the lore and immersion: this is the real Eve . Dropbear is gone. Eat sh!t".

Kinetic Fury

Angels need their own event. Being the buddies of the Serpentis during last summer's Shadow of the Serpentis wasn't enough. No Angel skin rewards from the reward crates, for one thing.

Herzog Wolfhammer wrote:

Those days are gone. Most of those players are gone. Most of those who are gone were only sticking around for those live events and the immersion/content that grew from them.

The last true "live event", something about black sites, an entire pickup fleet was fed into a nullsec gatecamp and raep-caged in a bubble. CCP's way of saying "Hey role-players and people who care about the lore and immersion: this is the real Eve . Dropbear is gone. Eat sh!t".

Eh, there's still plenty of peops around from those days. I was talking to someone who started playing in 2006 on incursion comms the other day and he was talking about the ol' days. Talked with plenty of 2003 and 2004 peops who are still playing, as well. Breaks now and then but you can't quit for good, ofc! ;)

Anyway, I started in 2013 (this is my 2nd main, started in 2014) and I remember the "last" live event you're talking about. I wanted to go but didn't make it due to being USTZ and most live events being EUTZ and during the week. That was the Ghost Site unveil, I believe, around the time of Rubicon in late 2013.

Sounded fun except I heard it had massive TiDi. Fleet that started at Meves, next door to Dodixie, had a very different experience than the fleet that started at Sarum Prime, next door to Amarr, so I read/heard at the time.

I did get to participate in the "rogue Caldari carriers/supercarrier pilots" event thing awhile after that, though. Was part of a Spectre Fleet NPSI roam that took part in it.

Also, missed out on the big Amarr Navy vs. Drifter Battleship shoot 'em up event but DID manage to go to the "Empress Jamyl Sarum gets blapped by the Drifter armada in her Avatar" event. EVE: I was there. It was real.

Oh, and people were ship scanning her Aeon escort... apparently their fits were not so good. ;_;

True Slave Foundations

Monyusaiya Industry Trade Group

That first time reaching the site of the violent wormhole, more nightmares on the field that you could imagine, and in an exploration ship (before SoE ships) hardly fit to run missions let alone deal with nightmares pouring out of a wormhole only to be followed by a carrier. My hands were shaking. The fear felt real. We even went into lowsec, fleets of strangers working together and survived.

Which low-sec Sansha event did you guys reach and not die in? I made damn sure FCORD died every time I was online :^)

But, yes, to the general point: Live Events has been squished and relegated to a 'in game promotional advertisement', more than storyline exploration. We Sansha saw it happening with the announcement, deployment, and subsequent change in behavior following the Incursion expansion. To date, from what I've heard and studied, that trend continued, especially as prominent proponents of the Live Events model left CCP.

There are some hard realities with trying to run such a system, I'll admit. You don't necessarily have the benefit of 'familiarity' that lends to continued plot building ala Dungeons and Dragons DMing style. You have political issues, such as favoritism accusations (and the long trails of proof of that in the past) that shadows such an idea. Then you have the relative degrees of interactivity: everyone can go pew-pew, but as you abstract and challenge ideas (Arek'jalaan), the community may or may not involve as many as you want. How much content can you re-visit before it becomes passe? Though, that one could be argued of EVE as a whole in it's own way ...

If I sat down I could probably overview list all the difficulties of such a model, but, the killing blow is always going to be, 'is this a financially sound investment?'. In other words, can CCP justify putting money, time, and effort supporting the system for their playerbase and expect a reasonable return on investment (be it monetary gains or player satisfaction). If the answer is 'yes', the next question then becomes 'how much?'. If you can get it past that rigorous demand, you have the potential of supporting roleplayer systems in a meaningful and sustainable way.

I honestly can't remember at this point if the Live Event model(s) ever convincingly reached that threshold. It has been, and seems to continue to be, treated as a novelty time waster.

But, I suppose fighting the fight for not only Live Event systems, but more roleplayer<->game ones as well (e.g, Factional Loyalty that isn't Faction Warfare) would be a separate thread altogether.